“Dose rates to the north-west of the nuclear power plants, were observed in the range 3 to 170 microsievert per hour, with the higher levels observed around 30 km from the plant.

You know, taking the lowest value from a range where the highest value is larger than the lowest by 50X and calling this ‘the average’ is just dishonest. Calling a dosage ‘daily’ when in fact it is hourly is 24 X dishonest.

First I say ‘radiation’ when I should say ‘ionizing radiation’. As Phil points ‘ionizing radiation’ refers to something apt to give you cancer, while ‘radiation’ without the modifier could just mean what comes out of a flashlight.

Second. I wasn’t clear about what study I was refering to. Phil links to an article by Richard Hollos and Stephan Hollos. They in turn link to a study about cancer on Colorado. Only that link is broken. Which is unfortunate, since we could probably learn much from that study.

]]>By: Michael Welfordhttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/21/xkcd-radiates/#comment-285905
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:34:54 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/?p=29886#comment-285905Phil, I’ve been looking at demographic information about Boulder County on Wikipedia, and that data shows that the reassuring article that you link to about radiation and cancer rates is simply rubbish. Looking at population growth figures you can only conclude that fewer than half of the people in Boulder County had been living there at for least 20 years during the period of the study cited. Also, it appears that Boulder County has a somewhat younger population than the nation at large, and therefor a lower cancer rate.

It occured to me that I could look at the cited study ( a county by county breakdown of cancer occurence and mortality ) and find out whether parts of Colorado with less nomadic populations had higher cancer risk. But wouldn’t you know it, I got one of those 404 file not found errors.

This seems to be a pattern with pro-nuke sites. Lots of links, but no (working) links to the original studies. Not one of the pages Randall Monroe links to is a primary source, and I couldn’t find a working link to a primary source on any of them.

Phil, since you live in Colorado, you might want to ferret out that study and find out what happens to people that are exposed to Colorados raidation levels for half a century. After all, your own and your families lives are at risk.

]]>By: Adelahttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/21/xkcd-radiates/#comment-285904
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 05:06:31 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/?p=29886#comment-285904I think some people watch to much Scifi. Someone used the phrase neutron beam to refer to the radiation leakage while others are bitching why isn’t there instant results of sampling as if we have tricorders or something. Right up there with the people saying they should have used the helicopters to remove the reactor cores and dump them in the ocean. The stupid is everywhere on this one.

Brazil nuts are the most radioactive food. I knew tobacco was bad but hell is it ever radioactive, up to 160mSv/year.

Uh… mammalian life (and mammalian immune systems) did not evolve in a high radiation environment and therefore have a special tolerance built in to handle ionizing radiation. Instead, the immune system evolved in an enviroment with pre-nuke age background radiation (i.e. lower overall background radiation than we have today).

Besides, for human individuals the immune system develops from infancy through the childhood years. It’s the fact young children and infants have immature immune systems plus the fact they are still growing (via lots of cell division) that radiation poses a larger risk for children than for adults.

Also, in your MRI scan, you were exposed to a high magnetic field and radio waves. Neither the magnetic field nor the radio waves posed any biological risk to you. That’s the beauty of an MRI. It’s also why talking about an MRI is irrelevant to a discussion of ionizing radiation (a.k.a. radioactivity).

Perhaps you are thinking of CT scans which expose the scannee to X-rays. Since X-rays are ionizing radiation, they are similar to but not entirely the same as the radiation this blog post is about.

I think it is misleading (if done through ignorance) or blatantly dishonest (if done knowingly) to treat the health risks from radioactive fallout (composed of Cs137, I131, etc.) as equivalent to the same increase level increase in the background radiation. ALL of the increase in ‘background’ the Japanese are experiencing is from fallout added to the environment.

Phil seems to insist on repeatedly making this false comparison. He seems really set on downplaying the risks faced by those living in the fallout zones (a.k.a. Japan). What’s wrong with this is that if his misinformation influences anyone actually living in the fallout areas, they may fail to take the precautions to manage their exposure to the fallout. (E.g. don’t drink dairy and especially don’t give your kids local dairy products right now.)

What’s your take on this? Are health risks from internal radiation from ingested/inhaled fallout the same as external (background) radiation?

“If the fuel rods in the spent fuel pool at #4 go critical (not likely, but not impossible),”

Actually, unless the laws of physics have changed recently, it IS impossible for them to “go critical”. 1) The fuel rods contain way too little rapidly fissioning(U235 or PU239) to do anything but get hot,,,then they may melt.

2) Even if they did, there is no way to CONTAIN the fissioning fuel long enough for it to go critical(bring two sub critical masses together and they’ll blow themselves apart before going boom). It’s an exponential thing. Criticality is hard to attain. Which is why every mothers son doesn’t have a nuke in the basement.

60. MarcusBailius

“and the fields in those are quite strong!”

I’ll say. When my foot was in an fMRI, it was exposed to a magnetic field intensity of 1.5 Tesla(15,000 gauss), which is about 300,000 times stronger than earths magnetic field.

As far as radiation causing cancer, don’t forget that old immune system that began its development over the ages earth was a lot more radioactive than it is today(half life decay results in a fraction of the radioactivity today vs 3.5 billion years ago) so life had to develop repair mechanisms for damaged DNA early on. Staphylococcus radiofurans is one life form that has carried that ability to an extreme. They can tolerate and thrive in a radiation environment 5000 times more deadly than what is required to kill a human. Cancer is more a result of the cell failing to die (apoptosis) when it fails its three(known) check points during DNA replication than a failure of the immune system to kill it. We probably kill off a lot of defective cells in our lifetimes. It’s when we get old that cancer can gain a hold (except for those younglings with defective dna control systems) and we have to intervene with medical processes.

Gary 7

]]>By: Radiation Chart « Infinity's Bloghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/21/xkcd-radiates/#comment-285900
Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:06:48 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/?p=29886#comment-285900[…] Source: Bad Astronomy […]
]]>By: icemithhttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/21/xkcd-radiates/#comment-285899
Wed, 23 Mar 2011 07:44:33 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/?p=29886#comment-285899@84. Messier Tidy Upper……….Aww dangit! I missed all of that Moon thing on Letterman on here last night too. But I did get to tune in before the Michio Kaku guest spot. He was familiar to us at least in the last couple of weeks, due to the Fukushima Triple Whammy, as our local 24/7 ABC 24 News Service and/or BBC feed had him as an expert. (Must be a cousin of David Suzuki, I wonder.)